We write to register our opposition to the proposed closure of Yearsley Swimming Pool. The pool is essential for local citizens to keep fit thus reducing the risk of ill health.

Swimming is the best form of exercise for all generations. The pool is used by children right through to OAPs.

The council should be promoting its leisure facilities more vigorously rather than closing them down. Closure will send a message to our children that physical exercise is not a priority, rather than encouraging them to make exercise an integral part of their lives.

Beyond the issue of exercise it is clearly important that local people, particularly the young, are trained in how to swim to reduce the risk of accidents caused by drowning. In a city so closely integrated with rivers the risk is obvious.

Any decision to close the pool would represent an incredibly ill-advised and lamentable failure by the council to properly recognise the value to the local society of the pool.

Roger and Carmem Mackle

Park Crescent,

York.

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